


War Babies

by palomino333



Category: L.A. Noire
Genre: Adultery, Estrangement, Father-Daughter Relationship, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Inspired by Music, Loss of Identity, Lost Love, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Post-Divorce, Regret, Shame, Sisters, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 09:57:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4217262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palomino333/pseuds/palomino333
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a flash fiction challenge: father. "I have to go. They'll take Marie away. I have to go."</p>
            </blockquote>





	War Babies

He misses them sometimes.

Other times, he wonders if he really had them at all.

Marie, he had felt her when they were young. As the outside world plunged into war in 1939, Marie fell asleep on Cole's shoulder, an open copy of Orestes in his lap.

1940 found them lying together, their bodies slick and dirtying the sheets, but the two of them too tired to care. She remembered how lazily the fan chopped the musky air. He remembered how she traced her fingers over his hair, sticky and standing up everywhere.

In 1941, she walked the beach with him, leaning on his arm somewhat from the weight of the unborn child. Wanda came that spring. For a few months, they enjoyed the fragile peace. He'd rocked Wanda back to sleep after nightmares and a fit of colic that had been the source of the most fear he had felt in his life (until Okinawa).

I have to go. They're just like us. I have to go. They'll take Marie away. I have to go. Wanda needs her father. I have to go.

Gwen was the daughter of the new Cole, the faulty lieutenant who shot Japs in the back. Cole subconsciously felt a little more drawn toward Wanda, the sister that been a piece of who he once was.

Decorated with a Silver Star that he placed away and forbid his daughters to touch, he wore the skin of a civil servant. He'd make something of himself. He'd be a better man.

"My daddy's a hero!"

Your daddy, little girl, placed innocent men behind bars.

Confiding in Elsa had allowed him at least some semblance of sanity to even feel worthy of Marie and his daughters. Cole shuddered to think of the possibility of what he might have degraded into, had he not met her. Stuart Ackerman stared at him from across the interrogation table.

On the front lawn, he'd begged to see Wanda and Gwen, but in his heart, he had hoped against hope that they were asleep. Please, don't prop your elbows on the windowsill. Don't press your face to the glass.

Elsa lets him have his peace. With a pat on the arm, she tells him to wake her if he needs anything.

Sipping his scotch, he stares at the shadows on the wall, his heart breaking as he thinks of Wanda being bullied over her father's mistake, and Gwen crying because she doesn't understand why Daddy is gone.

Elsa softly shakes him awake. The scotch is a dark puddle on the floor. Marie would've killed him for it. Elsa merely kneels down, and helps him to stand, leading him through a ballroom of ghosts and might-have-beens.

Who will Wanda marry? What will she name her children? Protectively he held her, that swaddled baby in his arms.

Elsa curls up beside him, his shoulder raised and the sheet slipping off, the fan whirling lazily overhead.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Father (can be used as theme/wording)  
> Words: 490
> 
> Inspired by the song, "When the Circus Came to Town," by Voltaire. 
> 
> Because I get wishy-washy when I think of Cole's personal relationships with his children. Also, it was interesting to write a sexual take on Marie. She's the obvious Betty to Elsa's Veronica, but the fact of the matter is that she wasn't just the mother of Cole's children; she was also his bedfellow. For contrast, I focused upon Elsa's "Betty" qualities, such as the fact that she provides emotional support to Cole. 
> 
> Wanda and Gwen's names are neither established in canon, nor are their birth dates, which gave me more material to work with. Gwen was a furlough baby in this.


End file.
